Wrestling: Boyertown knocks down Methacton

Like nearly everybody packed into the Methacton High ninth-grade gymnasium Thursday night, Warriors head coach A.J. Maida was mightily impressed with the performance of Pioneer Athletic Conference foe Boyertown, nearly the unanimous choice as the PAC team most likely to slug it out with Owen J. Roberts for conference supremacy.

And why not? The Bears beat up, battered and bruised the Warriors en route to a surprisingly easy 49-12 win.

But it wasn’t losing to Boyertown that had Maida hotter than a July bonfire, it was the way his team wrestled, acted and responded to the early-season challenge.

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“I don’t mind losing to a good team,” Maida spat out moments after his team was manhandled. “Sometimes you can learn something in a loss. But you don’t learn anything falling down and rolling over on your back.

“Boyertown embarrassed us in our own place, but we also embarrassed ourselves by our behavior on the mat and by people acting like they shouldn’t be acting.”

While it likely would have taken an Act of Congress for Methacton to upset Boyertown, the match was looked at by the Warriors as a gauge as to just how close they were to that level of wrestling that represents the PAC’s elite these days.

According to Maida after the match, the distance may well be longer than the distance from Fairview Village to Gabelsville.

“Right now, they’re a good team and we’re not,” Maida said. “The effort wasn’t there, across the board, and that’s my fault.

“Maybe I have to change the way we’re doing things.”

The Bears grabbed control of the match early, beginning with Jordan Wertz’s 4-0 whitewashing of Tahar Ferradji at 220 pounds and freshman sensation Jordan Wood bumping up to heavyweight to slip past Tracey Green via a third-period escape, 1-0.

By the time Garrett Mauger won by fall at 113, the visitors were on top, 18-0, and the Warriors had yet a to score a single point on the mat.

Things went from unsettling to uh-oh when Boyertown’s Dylan Wertz rallied from an 6-2 deficit to top Eric Straup, 10-8, at 120. Even after giving up two sets of near-fall points in the third, Straup appeared to have righted the ship with a reversal to seize an 8-6 lead late. But Wertz used a late reversal and back points to pull out the win.

“We started things off on the right note,” said Boyertown head coach Pete Ventresca. “We knew they had tough kids up top, and we figured they’d be battles up there, and they were.

“But I was very pleased with the way our kids wrestled. They were aggressive, showed good mat sense, and they were able to capitalize on some things.”

“That was a mental mistake by Eric,” Maida said. “He’s capable of wrestling really well, but that was just a case of situational awareness.”

Trailing 27-0 after a Edward Kriczky fall at 126, Methacton finally got on the board when Joe Staley hung on to top Dante Colonna at 132. But the Bears went right back to work at 138 when Reuben Maldonado erased a 2-0 deficit after one period and cruised to a 16-2 victory.

“We’re up, 2-0, after the first period and we lose, 16-2,” Maida said. “That’s got nothing to do with wrestling, that’s just being tough, and we have to be tougher.”

By the time the Bears had a built a 41-3 advantage, Maida was seeing red. And when one of his wrestlers puffed out his chest after a victory, Maida hit the roof.

“That’s not how we do things here, that’s not how we teach our kids to behave,” Maida said. “That was embarrassing.”

The Warriors’ fortunes did not improve over the final few bouts, and afterwards Maida vowed things were going to change.

“We’re just going to work on being better, and maybe change the way we do some things,” Maida said. “We can’t let something like this happen again.”